Sat front row at the symphony...

frogman,,

You're right that instrumental sounds have different colors, textures, tonal balance at close vs further distance.  But look into the mind of the composer.  He/she thinks of a melody in the mind, tries it on the piano, then writes it down.  Often the first complete work is solo piano, or piano 4 hands, or 2 or 3 pianos.  Later the piano work is arranged for orchestra.  A good example is Mussorgsky's original solo piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition.  Later, Ravel orchestrated it, which is the most popular version heard, but there were other composers who had different orchestrations.  

On youtube, there are recordings with simultaneous views of the complete score (written music).  As a musician, I want to know what the score contains.  Even a solo piano score contains details that I didn't realize were there even after thinking I knew the work well.  As for more complex orchestra works with many different instrumental groups, the score shows that a typical audience listener is missing the majority of what the composer had in mind.  An example is the prelude to Act 1 of Wagner's Lohengrin.  The score shows EIGHT violin parts.  I had thought there were only 2-4 after 50 years of thinking that I knew the piece well.  Only a 1st row listener (better yet, a stage performer) can hear much more of the details in the score.  From the 1st row at a performance, I could appreciate much more of the truth, which is in the score.  From greater distances, it is hopeless if you want to hear all the detail.  But the stage is best.  Mercury Living Presence recordings have the main mikes 10 feet over the conductor's head, to capture the most detail, with a good amount of space.  Most other commercial recordings are far inferior.

fleschler,

The most accurate and natural speaker is plasma. Totally massless, small driver the size of a tweeter, very efficient. Unfortunately, they are dangerous for ozone and other noxious gases, fire hazard from the burning flame from high voltages. Nelson Pass was hospitalized for an asthma attack after using a plasma speaker.

The next best transducer is the electrostatic principle. The lowest moving mass, total control from the membrane/stator sandwich. But all commercial stat speakers have severe flaws. To make up for the inefficiency and need to be near full range, large panels are needed. Even STRAIGHT large panels deliver smearing, due to the different distances to the listener ears from thousands of locations on the large panel. In this regard, the WORST speaker I ever heard was the Dayton Wright XG8 (10?) I heard in 1980. It was a 4 foot square panel.

The next meaningful experience was with Art Dudley when he worked for Edison Price. I heard the small Stax F81 and F83 speakers there. The F83 was a double stacked F81. I loved the midrange/HF purity of the F81 which was less than 3 feet tall. I had hoped the larger F83 would overcome the severely low 73 dB efficiency of the F81. It did, but unfortunately the 6 foot height caused severe rolloff of HF compared to the F81. I later figured out that the larger panel area, the more multipath time smearing occurs--worse time alignment. The best stat for tonal purity remains the original Quad 57 whose tweeter panel is very skinny and only about 30" tall. Later Quads are veiled by comparison, utilizing the flawed concept of time delay and much larger panels.

Putting all this together, I have a concept for the best possible stat speaker. If I were a famous audio designer, I could charge $ 1 million for this concept. But there is no market for accurate stat speakers in an a-phile market that cares more for boom boom loud dynamics and deep bass. So I reveal it here, in the hopes that some manufacturer who cares more for sonic accuracy and purity takes notice. Here goes--a large enough panel handles a wide freq range with reasonable SPL capability. But the panel is curved concave to the listener instead of convex like ML, Soundlab. The panel is a slice of a sphere whose radius of curvature is the listener distance. Say the distance is 8 feet. The slice might be 1 foot wide and 4 feet tall. The circumference of an 8 foot radius sphere is 8 x 2 pi = 26 feet. So this is like the curved edge of a 55 degree pie slice vertically, and a nearly straight 1 foot horizontally. The only listener requirement is to sit at the exact focal center of this spherical slice. That way, the direct radiation path which has the most HF extension reaches the listener from all parts of the panel with perfect time alignment. There is still a flaw from off axis parts of the panel reaching the listener with different freq balances, similar to a cardioid mike with rolled off HF off axis. This design is still better for accuracy than any large stat ever made. The smaller, the better, as in the Stat F81 and original Quad, if your music requirements are up to 80 dB. For me, I don’t want to hear junk from today’s speakers designed for loud SPL’s. I’m not impressed by 100 dB of junk when those speakers are badly veiled at 20-60 dB.

Another big problem with large panels is the bloated image, totally unnatural. A singer delivers sound from a mouth about 1-2 inches in diameter. A trumpet is like a 1 inch diameter tube whose horn flares to only a few inches, etc. So a wide range dynamic tweeter that goes down to 1 kHz can do a reasonable job for accuracy and proper image size. Dynamic tweeters are reasonably low mass and much more accurate than dynamic midrange and LF drivers. But all current panel speakers deliver bloated images. In my focused design, the image would be more true to life. The only instruments that are properly reproduced by current panel designs are large ones like pianos and pipe organs.

My Audiostatic 240 from 1980 is 2 straight panels mounted on a dummy support, so you can angle the 2 panels any way you want. The best results are from concave angling, with both panels beaming to each ear. I got the most bass, HF and SPL with this arrangement. But for best focus and purity in midrange/HF with admitted sacrifice of bass, I only use 1 panel which is 5" wide x 48" tall. Beamed right to my ear, it is the closest to my concept of a better design. On audiostatic.com, the MDi is shown for 3000 euros, although there is no opportunity to hear it before you buy, unless you travel to his suburb of Amsterdam, Netherlands.  The designer, Ben Peters is old, so I don’t know the delivery details. The panel is 11" x 44" so it looks like a smart design with the least compromises.

I remember the good sounding Koss 1A electrostatic speaker.  It was a large panel stat, but it included a dynamic tweeter.  At the time, I wondered why a dynamic tweeter was used, when everyone knows that electrostatic membranes are better than dynamic drivers for low mass and control.  But that's true in the midrange only.  Dynamic bass drivers are clearly superior to electrostatic panels for dynamic power in the bass.  A full range stat panel has too many problems for time smear at HF which I discussed above.  I have the horn loaded Enigmacoustics Sopranino electrostatic tweeter which I use time aligned with my main Audiostatic speaker.  The throat of the Enigmacoustics is quite small, probably comparable in size to a dynamic tweeter but with lower mass, so I get stat delicacy with the focus missed by all large stat designs.  But I now see the wisdom of that well designed Koss 1A.

@viber6 I couldn’t disagree more.  Yes, following a score is a great thing and, sure, sitting up close one can hear MORE of the individual details, but not necessarily more details which in a good hall are all there and in proper scale.  In fact, you lose the details which are the unique sounds of the blends of instrumental colors.  Some of the music gets lost.  Great composers think in terms of many layers of nuance of instrumental color, not simply melody.

”Pictures At An Exibition” is a wonderful work and Ravel’s orchestration is a great example of why he is considered one of the great orchestrators.  His orchestration is by far the best and most popular.  Korsacov’s not so much. The composer of the work, Rimsky-Korsakoff was himself a great orchestrator and I suppose that an argument could be made for why, in spite of how great Ravel’s version is, the piano version is the best since it is closest to the composer’s intent.  

frogman,

Good points for discussion on several levels.  As musicians, we strive to blend our sounds and play together.  For orchestral playing, a 1st violin section in a large orchestra has 16 violinists who are told by the conductor to suppress individuality and play as 1 violinist.  However in small chamber groups, there is a single player on each part, so the quirky individuality can be heard.  In a string quartet, sometimes the viola and cello are in exact unison, so they try to blend and play as 1 instrument.  But the viola and cello have different tonal character even when playing the same note.  It is more interesting to hear the tonal differences so that even though the same note is being played, there is more color from the overlay of differences on top of the sameness.  One of my favorite old string quartets, the Budapest, had two violinists who had very different sounds and temperaments.  The 1st violinist, Joseph Roisman, had a dark, sensitive, introverted sound and personality.  The 2nd violinist, Alexander Schneider, had a more forward sound and extroverted personality and playing style.  Schneider told a story of how an audience member said the quartet was marvelous because they sounded like 1 instrument.  But Schneider thought if that was true, it was a lousy concert.  He wanted good ensemble, but with a recognition of the differences, with each of the four players contributing his own individuality.  I agree with the Schneider view, although there are plenty of quartet groups that strive for more blended ensemble and less individuality.

For orchestral music, each composer seems to have their tonal signature to produce a unique timbre when 2 very different instruments are playing unison.  Flute combines well with violin in their similar freq range.  Bassoon may combine with French horn for that unique timbre.   I can recognize the identity of a composer by the timbre of the combination, even if I don't quickly name the particular piece.  So how does the audience listener appreciate the spectrum of separateness vs total blending?  For a distant listener, the blending predominates.  For a close listener, there is more separateness.  If the musicians are skillful, they blend well no matter how far away the listener is.

Analogy with food.  You can have 3 types of food on the same plate in separate locations, each carefully flavored.  Alternatively, you can mix them and make a tasty soup.  Both are enjoyable experiences, but it is unlikely that the mixture, well homogenized, would be as tasty as the separate foods.  Steak and salad don't mix well, but separately each would be delicious.  

The wine connoisseur enjoys the total blended taste, but he goes further and tastes the various flavors as they may appear at different times during the savory tasting.  He wants to separate the flavors and in that way get more appreciation of the fine character of the wine.  Years ago, I tried a liqeur blend called "43."  It was said that there were 43 individual components, but I could only perceive a few.  A more trained connoisseur could taste many more than I could, and I will say he could get more out of that tasting than I.

All this is my roundabout way of saying that the more distant hall sound is more blended and homogenized, and the closer seat still has some blend but more detailed colors and distinct individuality.  Someone may like the blended, homogenized sound, but it is NOT more detailed.  Rather, the details of the differences are like homogenized soup, much less identifiable.  Distant sound is the product of acoustical multipath bouncing around of various instruments in the journey from the stage to the distant location.  These are the laws of physics, like it or not.  Blending yields less information.  The conductor on the podium has it all--good blending with the maximum detail and appreciation of all the instruments.